"Thanks" Blizzard for Combat destruction

Honestly i love combat but seems for me to get into raids i NEED to be Assass. Blizz says they up Combat damage and blah blah BS but only way a combat can be effective is with a 4pc tier... now my question is WTF in gods blue earth will happen in 5.4??? I honestly do not think all the Tiers will have the same stats as now...

Anyway am giving up the game cause I really do not like assass and will not feel pressured to do so. so am sell/give away my account

I agree with Op, GC stated that they changed BF because rogues felt mandatory to go combat on some cleave fights, now with the change to BF rogues feel mandatory to go mutilate on EVERY FIGHT and leave combat to rot, imo another fail from GC and his crew.
And what about subtlety? I /lol at ppl trying to say that sub is viable, disc priest is more viable than subt for dmg

Even if he is raging, his question is quite legitimate. If combat needs 4p T15 to be on par with assassination, then what happens next tier without it? Either the t16 bonuses will have to favor combat vastly (again) in which case they will buff assassin (again) or they nerf assassination back to 5.1 (I doubt this), or combat will be just subpar in t16.

In ds people were forced to go combat. Just learn to adapt and move on

This ain't 100% true. Start of cata favored assa, firelands combat a bit and ds was all mostly about sub except the in your face dragon fight. But the main difference is there were no such silly comments from blizz saying blah blah "haste will fix it".

I was so happy when they buffed the active damaging skills (dispatch and envenom was it?) of assassination as it was a small indication that they were trying to move away from all the passive damage stuff the class is dependant on. Then they completely ruined this by buffing 2 passives after this...

I don't play a rogue, but really, these threads start to kinda piss me off. They've been around for god knows how long. With all classes and specs, really, see it as a possibility for you to learn your class fully, who knows, you might learn a trick or two from the other specs that will help you in your main spec in the current tier, from the other tiers.

Look i was venting cause to me in order to raid i MUST play a spec i hardly enjoy. I know all my rogue specs but personally i Love combat, i've adapted to all the crap they went through but it's a repetitive cycle that is getting tiring. I've seen this done to other classes too. So my question was what will happen to combat in the future without T15? yes i know Blizz prob is onto this, it's like me knowing i need to mow the lawns, i'll do it when am ready or my wife gets irate so right now am irate to blizz to fix the damn game for all classes and specs.

I never understood the reasoning behind always having to play the best spec, even if you don't like that spec.

if WoW is like riding a car, 90% of raiders are simply commuters. the fastest they'll ever have to drive is 130 kmph on the freeway. what does it matter if you can tune your car to go from 200 to 220? for a normal driver, there's never a situation where they'll need to go 220 or even 200. now, if you're a professional racedriver, you'll need the fastest possible, but that's not the situation that most players are in.

for example if a simple tank&spank boss has a 300 second enrage timer and has 240M HP and requires a 2-2-6 setup, you need 800K DPS to reach that timer. if every DPS and both tanks does 100K DPS, you got that. and every spec can do a lot more than 100K DPS. so you easily reach the enrage timer, and extra DPS just makes the boss die faster, but the boss still dies if you can do that 100K DPS. all normal bosses and all heroic bosses are tuned like this, where if you got the mechanics down, every spec can reach the required target if they're played correctly. Blizzard knows this, they balance the game around it. In fact, I'm sure if you math out how much DPS you need to push heroic Lei Shen in time each phase, you'll see that even the lowest DPS can reach that number according to simcraft.

I never understood the reasoning behind always having to play the best spec, even if you don't like that spec.

for example if a simple tank&spank boss has a 300 second enrage timer and has 240M HP and requires a 2-2-6 setup, you need 800K DPS to reach that timer. if every DPS and both tanks does 100K DPS, you got that. and every spec can do a lot more than 100K DPS. so you easily reach the enrage timer, and extra DPS just makes the boss die faster, but the boss still dies if you can do that 100K DPS. all normal bosses and all heroic bosses are tuned like this, where if you got the mechanics down, every spec can reach the required target if they're played correctly. Blizzard knows this, they balance the game around it. In fact, I'm sure if you math out how much DPS you need to push heroic Lei Shen in time each phase, you'll see that even the lowest DPS can reach that number according to simcraft.

I love your logic Scrooge, but tell that to all ths main raids. Am gearing for assas but it's not gonna be my pref play choice. Compromise i guess

I never understood the reasoning behind always having to play the best spec, even if you don't like that spec.

if WoW is like riding a car, 90% of raiders are simply commuters. the fastest they'll ever have to drive is 130 kmph on the freeway. what does it matter if you can tune your car to go from 200 to 220? for a normal driver, there's never a situation where they'll need to go 220 or even 200. now, if you're a professional racedriver, you'll need the fastest possible, but that's not the situation that most players are in.

for example if a simple tank&spank boss has a 300 second enrage timer and has 240M HP and requires a 2-2-6 setup, you need 800K DPS to reach that timer. if every DPS and both tanks does 100K DPS, you got that. and every spec can do a lot more than 100K DPS. so you easily reach the enrage timer, and extra DPS just makes the boss die faster, but the boss still dies if you can do that 100K DPS. all normal bosses and all heroic bosses are tuned like this, where if you got the mechanics down, every spec can reach the required target if they're played correctly. Blizzard knows this, they balance the game around it. In fact, I'm sure if you math out how much DPS you need to push heroic Lei Shen in time each phase, you'll see that even the lowest DPS can reach that number according to simcraft.

If you play in a hardcore/semi-hardcore guild when a RL looks at recount and sees you near tanks as dps he cares very little if the spec you like and play is broken or op but will let you know that your dmg is low and can compromise guild progress so you can either go assass or be benched.

Even if he is raging, his question is quite legitimate. If combat needs 4p T15 to be on par with assassination, then what happens next tier without it? Either the t16 bonuses will have to favor combat vastly (again) in which case they will buff assassin (again) or they nerf assassination back to 5.1 (I doubt this), or combat will be just subpar in t16.

Funny thing: It doesn't.

The two specs are very similar in sims right now, and (from my experience) they perform similarly in raids. The point where people are saying Combat is "on par" is actually the point where Combat breaks way out ahead. And by T16, the scaling Combat will receive will put it on-par with Assassination naturally.

Stop panicking. Once you get 522 weapons, you can play whatever spec you want (other than Subtlety, which is not actually a bad spec, but it's not nearly as good/easy as Assassination to min-max). It's also not the end of the world if you're playing a spec that (min-maxed) is slightly lower than your best spec; plenty of warlocks go Demonology even though Destruction and Affliction are better because Demonology isn't actually that far behind.

And most importantly, play the spec you want to play. There's a lot of people complaining that "Assassination isn't fast enough" when they could just go Combat at a 7% loss (or a gain, if your Combat weapons are better) and still pull great numbers and not piss anyone off.

Originally Posted by D3athsting

If you play in a hardcore/semi-hardcore guild when a RL looks at recount and sees you near tanks as dps he cares very little if the spec you like and play is broken or op but will let you know that your dmg is low and can compromise guild progress so you can either go assass or be benched.

If you're playing in a hardcore/semi-hardcore guild, you should be proficient in every spec. The player you're describing has other problems than "I just want to play Combat".

The point is not much about the favorite spec, but the effort/gain ratio and the impact you have on other people in your raid.

Actually changing a spec and learning it (at least the basics) doesn't require much work from the player, and often results in a net gain in performance - hence most of the times not only players feel forced to respec, but also they are quested to do so by their raid leaders/raiders.

You need to also count in the effect this better performance will bring to the raid: shorter/easier boss fights. No one is going to pass over it because, let's admit it, faster loot is good.

Most of the players look at these and just say "i must respec". I felt exactly the same all Cata because Combat was just better.

Last line on combat specifically: the 4t15 bonus is huge; anyway its value is calculated around the fact you make full use of it and you use every GCD and you don't cap out energy - all things that in a normal raid enviroment can happen every time, devaluing a lot the value of the bonus. TL;DR: assa may be ahead even with 4t15

I'll normally play whatever is highest and not complain about it, but it always feels odd when that is mutilate. Mutilate is honestly way simpler than combat, and has always been simpler than sub, mostly because combat requires all manner of button hammering. With combat you can end up thinking ahead to a red insight, get just about every button perfect, and still be behind your mutilate performance.

As far as looking into the 5.4, understand that they aren't limited by the exact scaling factors, so when this 4 piece goes away they might tweak combat a bit.

I think the idea is that blade flurry is supposed to make up for it?

I don't know what to tell you. You COULD play combat anyway. The difference isn't like 30% or anything, and combat brings better burst cycles. If you are in the position where you feel you need to play whatever spec and style is correct for the fight, then IMO focus on just how awesome it is that ROGUE brings stuff raids give a fuck about, and how good the class is. If you just consider yourself a combat rogue, don't rage because a mutilate rogue is superior sitting on a boss forever- that's pretty much his whole niche, even if he has less buttons to press.

Combat could use a little buff. It might get it, or might not. But I recommend either changing your perspective so that your actions are good, or changing your actions such that you are happy. Rogues are strong in pve, and desired, and you actually help your team, and that's great!

The two specs are very similar in sims right now, and (from my experience) they perform similarly in raids. The point where people are saying Combat is "on par" is actually the point where Combat breaks way out ahead. And by T16, the scaling Combat will receive will put it on-par with Assassination naturally.

Stop panicking. Once you get 522 weapons, you can play whatever spec you want (other than Subtlety, which is not actually a bad spec, but it's not nearly as good/easy as Assassination to min-max). It's also not the end of the world if you're playing a spec that (min-maxed) is slightly lower than your best spec; plenty of warlocks go Demonology even though Destruction and Affliction are better because Demonology isn't actually that far behind.

And most importantly, play the spec you want to play. There's a lot of people complaining that "Assassination isn't fast enough" when they could just go Combat at a 7% loss (or a gain, if your Combat weapons are better) and still pull great numbers and not piss anyone off.

If you're playing in a hardcore/semi-hardcore guild, you should be proficient in every spec. The player you're describing has other problems than "I just want to play Combat".

I'm sorry but it doesn't what?

Ok let's say they are performing similary (tbh I think all parses show assassination way above combat, but yes with the 4p bonus and in a totally ideal patchwerk fight they are very close to each other on the sims) with combat having the 4p bonus. The OP is asking what will happen once combat doesnt have that advantage?

Unlike cata, with the assassins's resolve change affecting all your damage now + the buff to it put's it's scaling very very close to combat's, so saying that in t16 combat will be better just because of that is wrong.

My problem with the 4-set for combat is that its performance very quickly drops off if you don't have amazing latency.

On an unrelated note, I really wish Blizzard would've waited until 5.3 comes out to remove combat weapons from the coin table of assassination and sub since it pretty much forces any rogue that wants to go combat at some point to go combat on any boss they coin for a chance at the shared boss drops.

My expectations: combat will get buffed, the set bonus gets nerfed into the ground, and both specs are near each other again in T16. Right now, the specs are not HUGELY far apart - a combat rogue in 4p with a 509/504 weapons can still pull 150k on Jin'rokh, and to be honest, he's not as good as the assassination rogue at 180k - come Horridon, his SnD uptime is 50-70% and RvS is lower (landing him under a disc priest for a final-phase H Horridon pull). He's working on that.

The point stands, while it might not keep up with assassination at an equal level of play, you're not gimping your raid until you don't play it well. There may come a time to panic - say, when the first PTR for T16 comes out, and assassination is pulling 270k DPS and combat's at 200k - but we're a long ways from that right now. If you're having trouble keeping pace with your tanks as combat (and you're not on 25s! That vengeance...) it might be time to look at your logs and see if you can play significantly better, before blaming your spec. If you need help, feel free to post your logs - specifically in this forum - and ask your local rogue community to give a look at it and see what we can find.